End Of Year Celebration

To end our school year I organized an End of Year Celebration with some fellow homeschooling families. This is only the second year doing this and it grew a lot this year, I am hoping that by the end of next year it will be even larger.... as we all (children & adults) loved it. It was a wonderful way to put a close to the year or simply award your child some recognition on accomplishments they worked hard on throughout the past year. This was a a nice approach for homeschoolers who followed various calendars - it was not assumed each family was 'ending' the school year as some were awarding reading awards, special class awards, workshops certificates, art awards, musical talents, etc. A wonderful mix!!

We invited all the students to bring along some of their work from the year to share.  There was such a variety of work displayed, everything from display boards of art work to Lego creations, photo montages to portfolios of work, sewing samples and penmanship work, live music and singing. The variety of work was wonderful and really offered a great show to enjoy for both the kids and the adults.

After we all enjoyed time viewing the kids work we viewed a slide show of the year as a group and kids were then invited to share their work. This offered them a chance to do some public speaking (which was so much fun!) and some did musical pieces... so much talent! To finish out the evening each family then brought up their students to recognize their year.

I did Holly's award, recognizing her First Grade year. She had an amazing year filled with so many activities and field trips, classes and group experiences, math and art, science and nature club, reading to many books to count, spelling and writing, projects and cooking... the list is endless! Holly has grown as a student and we are so very proud of her. She is now heading to second grade this coming fall -- another wonderful year ahead I am sure!

It was a wonderful evening and I am looking forward to watching these kiddos grow through the years and see their wonderful accomplishments!

First Grader!

Last night we enjoyed an evening of saying good bye to Kindergarten and hello to First Grade! We joined several other homeschool families to celebrate over good foods, children sharing about their year and favorite works from school and a ceremony to say 'job well done' to each child. Holly had a wonderful time! It is so strange to think she is starting First Grade... where has the time gone?

End of Year

This evening we are celebrating the end of our school year with some other wonderful homeschooling families. The children have all been invited to bring along some of their school work to share: a special project, a collection, a talent, an assortment - whatever the child would like to share. Holly has thought on this for a couple of weeks and just recently decided she wanted to share some of her art work from the year... an Art Exhibit she called it.

Last night we got out an old display board and she sorted through her entire collection of art we kept, unfortunately some pieces did not make it to our storage (several 3-D styles). After much debate... and it took some time, she narrowed it down to about half of her collection. She laid it out many times over until she found the right display and then we attached it. She added some various small art pieces throughout and chose others for the table portion of her display. When all was said and done -she was SO PROUD of her display!

I am looking forward to this evening for her, where she will get to celebrate the end of Kindergarten with homeschooling friends and share a bit on her life as a homeschooler! She is excited! I'll share some photos tomorrow from our evening... in the mean time here is Holly working hard on her display. I didn't think to take any photos in the beginning part of her creating this mini-exhibit... so bummed! But, here is the final stages.